Exam 9: Social Psychology As a Science

The hypothesis of Miller et al.'s first experiment, which attempted to modify children's littering behavior, was that:

Suppose you volunteered to be a subject in a psychology experiment in which you were locked into a sound-proof booth and were told that your brain waves were being measured. Furthermore, you truly believed that your brain wave pattern was being used to predict your basic personality traits. According to Aronson, this experiment would have ________ mundane realism and ________ experimental realism.

Why do social psychologists conduct experiments? Choose an experiment (such as the "initiation" study by Aronson & Mills) and use it to illustrate the advantages of the experimental method. What problems would a researcher encounter if he or she tried to study the same phenomenon as it occurs in the real world?

In discussing their results on the relative effectiveness of persuasion and attribution techniques in producing behavioral change, Miller et al. advance which of the following explanations for their findings?

In the Aronson and Mills experiment, the ________ was (were) the independent variable(s) and the ________ was (were) the dependent variable(s):

Psychiatric interviews of subjects in Milgram's obedience study (in which subjects believed they were delivering intense electric shocks to another person) conducted one year following the study, revealed:

The crucial difference between experimental and nonexperimental methods of investigation is that experimental methods involve:

A study on dating relationships found that the number of text messages sent between dating partners increased with the number of miles they lived apart. This finding is a:

The dependent variable in an experiment is used to measure:

In an experiment, extraneous (nonmanipulated) variables are controlled by:

Which of the following is not an ethical guideline proposed by Aronson in conducting an experiment?

In an experiment, two groups of college students were shown the same pictures of 25 women from a different campus. However, for one group, the photos were altered to make the faces in the photographs appear more symmetrical. Participates rated the attractiveness of the women on a one-to-ten scale with ten being very attractive and one be very unattractive. In this experiment, what was the independent variable?

Aronson believes that the study of social psychology is:

The reason experimenters randomly assign participants to different conditions in an experiment is to:

Cover stories are used to:

The main reason social psychologists want their experiments to have impact on subjects is that, without impact:

According to the text, the first step in the scientific method is:

Miller et al. warn against seeing their findings either as the basis for specific educational reforms or as an effective step toward ending social inequalities. They cite several reasons why they hold this less-than-optimistic view. Which of the following is not one of those reasons?

In conducting an experiment, the researcher's goal is to:

In a correlational study on the relationship between caffeine consumption and heart disease in police officers, the fact that the officers could not be randomly assigned to high and low caffeine groups suggests the results may be due to: